I Believe the events recorded in The Book of Revelation happen in the order they are recorded with few if any exceptions.
I believe The Rapture happens at the midway point, after The Church's Tribulation but before God pours out His Wrath.

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Friday, September 19, 2014

The Four Horsemen of Revelation 6

This is not gonna be your typical Four Horsemen study. I'm not going to go equally in depth into each one. I'm gonna elaborate on my own thoughts on what I feel others commonly get wrong, while adding unique observations of my own. Rather then rehash what countless other teachers have gone over.

[[Update: My endorsements of Alex Jones documentaries I now greatly regret since he's become a Trump supporter.]]

First I want to discus the common notion that they're perfectly analogous with Matthew 24:5-7. As I explain in my Olivte Discourse Study, these are the Non Signs, they're characteristic of all History and Jesus' whole point here was it is fallacy to cite those vague things as Signs.

I'm not saying the Horsemen have no connection to these trends, I wouldn't have recommend those documentaries if I felt that way. In a sense they are these common trends of history coming to their true commencement. But to cite that part of the Olivte Discourse as specifically End Times is to give a middle finger to what Jesus actually said.

Verse 7 says these things are the "Beginning of Sorrows", that doesn't contradict my point. What Preterists miss is that in a sense the entirety of the Church Age is the Time of the End.

With that out of the way, I want to get into to how they relate to the issue of The Antichrist. The most common view is The White Horseman is The Antichrist, which I consider possibly true in a sense, I'll get to that.

Some like to say all four horses have the same rider, and that's The Antichrist. The problem with that is the Fourth Rider is identified in Revelation 6 itself as Death. Revelation 20 reveals that Death is sent into the lake of Fire after the Millennium, after Satan even. The Beast and The False Prophet are sent there before The Millennium.

So IF all four have the same rider, that goes against the rider being The Antichrist.

Is it possible Death rides all four not just the Fourth? Would seem weird not to identify him earlier, but things affiliated with earlier horsemen are repeated for the Pale Horse. However looking at Zechariah 6 which is linked to the Four Horseman issue, I'm inclined to view them as separate riders.

Not all agree The White Horseman is The Antichrist. First objection might be, why is this the only time in Revelation that The Antichrist isn't "the beast"? Other books of The Bible use various titles for him, but Revelation is everywhere else far more consistent. Well, the second beast of Chapter 13 is called by a far more human title elsewhere, The False Prophet, so why not the first?

But also I feel he doesn't become The Beast until he ascends out of the Bottomless Pit, when his Mortal Wound is healed. The first reference to The Beast is in Chapter 11, when The Witnesses are killed, 3.5 years into the 70th Week. The Rider on the White horse I view as the Human being who later becomes The Beast.

This isn't something to build doctrine on, but the fact that so many awaited Messianic Figures of false religions also ride White Horses, (like Kalki, the future Avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism), I feel backs up this being The Antichrist. Doesn't prove The Antichrist will actually claim to be those individuals either, I believe Satan has planted many seeds for the End Time deception, and that even he isn't 100% sure how things will play out. Example, while I've come to reject the theory that The Antichrist will claim to be the Mahdi of Islam, I do not doubt at all Satan created that Prophetic tradition for the purpose of being a possible option for The Antichrist.

The Rider on the White Horse is often interpreted as a positive figure. Confusing him with the White Horseman of Revelation 19 is the root of that. But not all interpretations making him a good guy make him Jesus.

I've seen this Horseman argued to be The Church. I feel that view is not sufficiently backed up by any other terminology used of The Church.

Some Muslim scholars have identified their Mahdi with this part of Revelation, which only lends fuel to Christians who are obsessed with an Islamic Antichrist. I don't know if current Mormons have actually connected their White Horse prophecy to the First Horseman. But I feel like Revelation 6 must have inspired Joseph Smith or whoever really originated it.

The Fourth Horseman we know winds up in the lake of fire, but does that prove they're all villains? Death is an Angelic being clearly while the first I view as Human, so there can be differences between what kinds of personages they are.

Perhaps it's not either/or, perhaps he is a good guy at first, but makes a deal with the Devil latter. There are Biblical precedents for a leader anointed by a True Prophet of God's orders winding up a villain. Saul, Jeroboam, Jehu, and yes even Solomon. Not to mention Jesus personally choose Judas, yet he was a Devil (John 6:70).

I and Chris White think he may claim to be, or be claimed by others to be, the Rabbinic Jewish figure of Messiah Ben-Joseph. And with what I suggested above, maybe that wouldn't even be entirely a wrong claim. Three out of those four Old Testament examples are people viewed in one way or another as a type of Ben-Joseph by those who believe in that concept.

I talked in that post I made on White's theory about how even some Christians accept this idea of a Messiah Ben Joseph separate from Jesus. I'm kind of surprised I haven't yet seen any of those Christians link Messiah Ben-Joseph to the White Horseman.

The rider on the White Horse has a Bow and is given a Crown. Genesis 49:24 Jacob says of Joseph "But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the
hands of the mighty God of Jacob". And Zechariah 9:13 says "When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy
sons, O Zion, against thy sons O Javan". And Isaiah 28 "Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim".

Those who look for astronomical correlations to the imagery in Revelation, inevitably see Sagittarius as the Rider on the White Horse. He is a Horseman, he has a Bow, and is sort of holding the Corona Borealis (a Crown).

Different Mazzaroth/Gospel in The Stars researchers have different theories on how to align the 12 Zodiac signs with the 12 tribes. Leo as Judah and Scorpio as Dan are the most universal. But maybe more then one such theory is equally true, because the 12 Tribes are defined differently in different Biblical passages. Even on the near universal two I mentioned, Deuteronomy 33 has Dan as the Lion's Whelp.

The same Biblical references that could connect Joseph/Ephraim to the White Horseman, have caused some Mazzaroth sites to make him Sagittarius. Sagittarius being next to Scorpio is interesting, Dan and Ephraim are the two names left out of Revelation 7's account of the sealing of the 144,000. It is Genesis 49 that makes Dan a Serpent (Scorpion fits the Biblical definition of a Serpent, and Scorpio is linked to Ophiuchus and Serpens) and Judah the Lion. That Chapter's description of Joseph can only make him Sagittarius, not Taurus or Aquarius.

Generally the first and last Horsemen are the only ones identified with specific personages. Death and The Antichrist. What about the two in between? Certainly those evils can have villains in charge of them too. But as far as other Biblical Prophetic personages to identify them with goes, I can't think of anyone for the Black Horseman. For the Red Horseman however, someone who goes to War with The Antichrist seems logical.

The King of The South or King of The North of Daniel 11:40 perhaps. But I've discussed elsewhere how The Terrible of The Nations in Ezekiel seems to be the one who gives the beast his Mortal Wound. And he does so with a Sword, and The Rider on The Red Horse has a Sword.

Lastly I want to address Chris White's claim that the "wild beasts of the earth" from the Fourth Horseman's description are the beasts of Revelation 13, and so he can therefore place the Abomination of Desolation in the Fourth Seal thus helping the Pre-Wrath position.

True, it's technically the same Greek word used for beast, and only here in Revelation is "wild" added to try and make it seem like it's clearly wild animals, but it is rendered "wild beasts" elsewhere outside Revelation. And in Revelation this is also the only time it's plural. The Beasts of Revelation 13 are never refereed to with the plural form of the word, when it's necessary to refer to both in the same breath, the second becomes The False Prophet.

His argument about the grammar of the verse is true however. The Greek text does imply these beasts are controlling the famines and wars and earthquakes mentioned before. So I do think the word is being used here in a way related to Daniel 7 and 8, as imperialistic nation states. But it's not the Chapter 13 Beasts yet.

They could possibly be the current Globalist Agenda carrying out their planned Eugenics operations. I think, drawing on White's own theories about The Antichrist, that The Antichrist may present himself as saving the world from their evil operations.

Or maybe they're the first three beasts of Daniel 7, before the Fourth Beast conquers them. Which also lends itself to other theories of White's, which I partly agree and partly disagree with.

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About Me

I'm a Christian, I believe The Bible is the Inspired Infallible Inherent Word of God, I'm an Evangelical Universalist and a Libertarian Communist. I teach that The Bible does not condemn Homosexuality. And I'm a Nerd and Otaku.
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